1. Happiness is a combination of three things: enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Enjoyment is intentional pleasure. Satisfaction is the joy received from a job well done. Purpose is finding signficance if your life. If you have these three things in balance and abundance, you will have happiness.
  2. To figure out the purpose of your life, ask yourself the following questions: "why am I alive, and for what would I be willing to die?" If you are missing an answer to either or both questions, you will likely find yourself with an existential crisis. You need go on a search in your life to answer these questions, and the answers will vary from person to person.
  3. The way feel gratitude is to decide to be grateful. You can achieve this through the process of metacognition: being aware of your emotions and what you're thinking. Instead of letting your emotions dictate how you are going to act, you allow yourself to bring your feelings into the prefrontal cortex of your brain and process them. In your prefrontal cortex, you can take your emotions into account but can consider other factors before making a decision on what to do next. Here's a gratitude/metacognition exercise: make a list of the five things you're most grateful for on a Sunday night. Every night for the rest of the week, spend five minutes looking at your list. Every Sunday, edit and remake your list. In 10 weeks, you will be between 15-25% happier because you made a conscious choice to be grateful. You will have managed your emotions instead of them managing you.
  4. Good diet, sleep, and exercise won't increase your happiness. They will, however, lower your levels of unhappiness. This may sound like splitting hairs, but happiness and unhappiness are actually processed in different parts of the brain. Combatting your happiness or unhappiness levels are both valid strategies for improving your overall mood.
  5. Depression and uncertainty are likely to follow after achieving a goal. This is the satisfaction dilemma: chasing and completing a goal may give dopamine boosts, but then it stops once you have what you want. We often think the only way to become satisfied again is to make another goal, but that's not quite right. The better way to look at satisfaction is through a formula (how much I have / how much I want). Both achieving more and wanting less are valid ways to become more satisfied.
  6. Social media can cause depression. It's the junk food of social activities - high calories, low nutrition. We go on social media on a hunt for oxytocin, but humans get little oxytocin without touch or eye contact. If you're going to use social media, it should only compliment your in-person relationships, it shouldn't be used as a substitute for an in-person friendship. It should be used sparingly, 30 minutes or less across all platforms. Otherwise, social media will negatively impact your happiness.

I found this video on happiness from a Harvard professor awhile back and really enjoyed it. I thought I would share his tips here with you all!

We often talk here about being the "goddess of light and fun", needing to be in a good mental state before getting into LTRs, and taking responsibility for your own life and happiness. Sometimes it can feel so difficult to know where to start. I hope this guide proves useful.

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